


Judgment Night

by JeanGraham



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24519649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: The Enforcers put Nick on trial for killing LaCroix.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Judgment Night

"You knew."

At his accusation, Janette turned from the mantel, firelight backlighting her gown and dark tresses. A few moments before, she had appeared on his landing while he sat at the piano, pleased that he had sensed her arrival through their strengthening link. The realization had not pleased Nick.

"That he was back? No," she denied. "Not until tonight. I sensed something, but I thought..." She let the sentence trail, while he stared vacantly at the piano keys, fingering silent chords. She crossed the Persian carpet, pressed herself close behind him and stroked his hair with her long, manicured fingers. "Oh, Nicola. He will not be pleased with you..."

He glanced once at the scorch marks on the elevator door, then escaped her caresses by bolting from the piano bench and rushing to the relative safety of the kitchen sink. In truth, he had not been prepared to deal with Janette. When he'd arrived at the loft this evening, he'd fully expected to find Lacroix. After the unfinished business of their fight in the warehouse earlier tonight...

 _"Mon pietre Nicola..."_ Janette idly teased three notes from the piano. "What will you do?"

The seeming callousness with which she asked the question stung. But however much Janette might profess to love her  
'Nicola,' he knew that she had loved their master more. He also knew, with the experience of eight centuries, that there was  
nothing he _could_ do. That Lacroix would demand retribution was a given. When he would take it, no one could say. But escaping it would be out of the question.

"Nothing," he answered her.

"But..." Janette's blue eyes had gone from playful to genuinely concerned. "You should go. Try to get away."

"Where? There's nowhere to run, Janette. Not anymore."

She walked toward him, clearly puzzled at this change of attitude. "You cannot simply sit and wait. Nicola, he will have  
your head this time! You *know* how he is when he is angry!"

Grimly, Nick nodded. He knew only too well. Just as he knew that Lacroix would find him, wherever he might go, and that sooner or later, the devil would have his due. To delay the inevitable by trying to run would be pointless.

"There's nowhere to go," he repeated. And he was tired of running. No, he would stand and face Lacroix, whatever the  
consequences.

There were tears in Janette's eyes now. "But he may try to ki--"

Nick put two fingers to her lips, stopped the word. "I know," he said. He looked past her to the window. "The sun will be up  
soon. Whatever he plans, I don't think he'll do it tonight."

She fell easily into his embrace, an eternal, familiar habit that he'd purposely avoided in his most recent quest for humanity,  
and wouldn't have admitted missing, until now. For a long moment, neither spoke. They simply stood and held each other tightly, her head against his shoulder.

"You're welcome to stay," he said at length, surprised to find that he meant it.

"No." Her voice was tight, tear-choked. "No, I must go." The kiss she gave him was swift, passionate, and bore an  
undisguised hint of desperation. She started to say something more, couldn't. She fled to the elevator instead, the burned  
door closing swiftly on her pleading expression. When she was gone, he reached for the remote, took a final look at Toronto's pre-dawn skyline, and then closed out the night.

  
*+*

  
Eight hours of desk duty on the following night's shift had left him bored and ill-tempered. (How did mortals stand it?) Just  
a formality, Cohen had insisted, until IA could clear the last of the red tape away and be sure his record remained clean. He didn't like the thought of anyone -- particularly IA -- prying too closely into his carefully forged background, not even to finish clearing him of a murder charge.

"Oh, come _on,_ Natalie!" Schanke's high-pitched voice preceded him in the precinct door with Natalie Lambert a few steps in front of him. "This is the 90s." He waved a slip of paper at the coroner. "At least give him a call. I'm tellin' ya, he's a really nice guy!"

She laughed, and the sound of it made Nick grin in spite of his mood. "Thanks, but no thanks, Schanke." She stopped at their  
conjoined desks, graced Nick with a manila folder and a smile. "Conklin report," she said. "No trauma, no sign of a struggle.  
Looks like accidental drowning, clear cut."

"Thanks." Nick took the folder, reveling for the briefest of moments in the warmth of the hand that brushed his in passing.  
"Nat..."

"Talk sense to her, will ya Nick?" Schanke plopped his overweight frame into the desk chair opposite, still fingering the piece of paper that doubtless held another bachelor cousin's phone number. "All work and no play, y'know what they say?"

Nick laughed. "I'll try," he promised. "And I never got to say thanks, to both of you, for standing by me the last few days.  
It meant a lot. I want you to know that."

"Hey, any time," Schanke bubbled. "Aw, hell, Nick, a guy knows his partner better than that. I know you could never kill  
anyone!"

 _Yeah, Schank. If only you really knew..._ He forced the thought away.

"...sorry I screwed up the DNA test," Nat was saying. "God, Nick, I can't believe I almost got you--"

"It's all right." Nick captured her hand, ignoring Schanke's open-mouthed shock at the gesture. "I just wanted to say thanks  
for trying to help. For everything." He watched her eyes change with the unspoken realization that he wasn't just referring to  
yesterday's debacle with the DNA samples.

She squeezed his hand once, then slipped hers away. "Yeah, well... it's about time you went off shift, isn't it? Sun'll be up  
in less than an hour."

"Yeah. I was just leaving."

He'd started to rise when an overwhelming sense of Lacroix's presence washed over him, drove him back into the chair. He looked frantically around the squad room, saw no one who shouldn't have been there.

"Nick?" Natalie's hands gripped his shoulders. "Nick! What is it?"

The presence receded as quickly as it had formed, fading to a quiet roar, teasing at his senses; always there, but just out of  
reach. He'd nearly forgotten how strong Lacroix's link to his 'fledglings' could be.

Nick blinked, found himself looking into Natalie's worried face. "Damn it, Nick, will you talk to me? What is it?"

"Nothing," he lied. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

"You sure as hell don't _look_ fine." Schanke waggled a pencil at him. "I'm tellin' ya, partner, it's that screwball diet you starve yourself on. Like a little cheese and garlic pizza every now and then would kill you?"

Rising, Nick made an anguished face at him. "It might. See ya 'round, Schank." Sobering, he turned back again. "Oh and  
Schanke..."

The other man looked up at him. "Yeah?"

"Give Myra and Jenny my love, OK?"

His partner of two years frowned at that, the pencil tapping on his desk blotter. "What's this, good-bye or something?"  
Schanke's overbearing manner made it too easy to forget that he was also a cop with very good instincts. "You going on a vacation I didn't know about, Knight?"

_Maybe._

"No, no. Just... give them both my love. That's all."

Confused, Schanke shrugged. "Yeah, sure. OK."

Nat had suddenly laid claim to his left arm. "I'll walk you to your car."

He went without complaint, said nothing until they were outside, behind the precinct house, and he had the keys in the  
Caddy's lock. Nat's question staid his opening the door.

"Want to tell me about it?"

He couldn't look at her. He studied his own pale reflection in the Caddy's window glass instead. "I don't think so," he said.

"OK." She sounded hurt. "I'll, uh, stop by later tonight, after you're awake. Got a new protein shake for you to try."

"Sure. Fine."

Her suspicion and hurt were becoming tangible, threatening to break his resolution not to involve her. To tell Nat was to  
endanger her, and he refused to do that. Nick got into the car without ever looking at her, and drove away.

  
*+*

  
Lacroix was here. He knew it the moment he touched the keypad to enter his alarm code and stepped into the lift.

 _He will have your head this time,_ Janette had said, though Lacroix's own droll comment the night before had been, "I've  
decided to take you back." In point of fact, neither prospect particularly pleased him.

The elevator lurched to a halt. He reached out, muscled the heavy door aside, stepped out into a pool of moonlight from the  
high unshuttered windows.

"Hello, Nicholas."

He lifted his head to gaze up at the dark-clad figure on the landing. Lacroix's smile, all too familiar, said clearly that he  
planned to enjoy this.

Nick started to reply, but another stirring, another presence, made him turn instead. To his left, from the shadows beneath the  
stairs, three forms emerged. The first was a woman with close-cropped dark hair, pale skin, a form-fitting white gown. Her  
companions, grim-faced and golden-eyed, wore nondescript drab brown -- and both carried sharpened wooden stakes.

_Enforcers._

Stunned, Nick took an involuntary step backward. Of all the things he might have expected of Lacroix, this was the last.

"I told you, did I not," the master's velvet voice crooned from above him, "that I wouldn't be able to protect you forever?  
That disobedience could be tolerated for only so long before..." He hesitated ever-so-briefly before exhaling the last words.  
"...measures would have to be taken."

Measures... Nick backed further until he collided with the elevator door. His fingers touched the burned and blistered paint  
there, and he snatched his hand away. Measures? Final death, for him, would mean a final damnation...

"No," he whispered. "Please, Lacroix, don't do this."

His creator folded unsympathetic arms across a broad chest, shaking his head minutely. "It's out of my hands, I'm afraid.  
"Lysette and her 'associates' will no longer be dissuaded. Not by me. And certainly not by you."

"I haven't--"

His master silenced him with a glare. Then coldly, deliberately, he stepped away from the railing and turned his back.

"Lacroix..."

"Nicholas de Brabant," the woman in white addressed him huskily, "you stand accused on two counts of severe violation of  
the Code. The first charge is betrayal. The second is patricide."

Nick looked at her for the first time, and allowed defiance to deepen his tone. "I have betrayed no one. And as to my  
'father...'" He nearly choked on the word. "He is, as you can see, very much alive."

Her black eyes regarded him without compassion. "You have shunned the teachings and the congress of your own kind. You have sought instead the company of mortals, have confided our secrets to mortals, have sought in fact to _become_ mortal. Do you deny this?"

"I have harmed no one in that quest."

Her tone softened, the French accent deepening. _"Au contraire, chevalier._ To deny your nature is to betray our kind. Worse, it is to _endanger_ our kind."

"But I haven't. I swear to you--"

"The evidence says otherwise," she interrupted, dismissing his protest with a wave of her slender white hand. "As to the   
second charge of patricide..."

To that he had no defense, and knew that his face had told her as much. He had killed Lacroix to protect Alysse, and Alysse  
had died anyway. In the end, it had all been meaningless.

"Nothing I say will make any difference, will it?" he asked bitterly. "Because you've already reached your verdict. Pass your  
judgment and be done with it."

For a protracted moment, Lysette said nothing. She studied him with ancient eyes before proclaiming, "As you wish. You do  
not deny the act, then."

"I do not deny it."

Black eyes bore into him. "Nor do you regret the act."

He looked to the landing, where Lacroix's back remained resolutely turned. "I do not regret it."

"And the malice you bear is also unrepented." That was not a question. "Would you commit the act again?"

He _felt_ Lacroix turn.

Given the same threat, the same set of circumstances...

Nicholas de Brabant looked up into the cold blue eyes of his maker, and because he could give no other answer, damned himself with a solitary word.

"Yes."

Lacroix's face remained impassive, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond his son. Nick looked away.

"You are judged guilty on both charges," Lysette's emotionless voice intoned. "The penalty for betrayal in this degree is  
censure. The punishment for patricide in any degree is death."

In a soundless blur, the two male Enforcers moved to flank Nick. They pulled him away from the door, one stepping behind him.

A powerful hand gripped his shoulder and pressed downward, forcing him to his knees. Absurdly, he found himself glancing aside at the mottled pattern of light on the floor. The sun had risen. Why hadn't they closed the shutters? Then, with a horrible, sick certainty, he knew why, and the realization sent him reeling. He pitched forward, nearly striking his head on the floor before the same vice-like hand that had clutched his shoulder fastened in his hair and pulled, jerking him savagely upright again. Two brown-clad legs moved into his field of vision, followed by a hand, an arm -- and three feet of sharply pointed stake, the tip of which came to rest just over his heart.

All told, he believed he would die three times tonight. Once, impaled by the wood; twice, burned to ash in the sunlight; thrice  
when his unshriven soul met its Ultimate Maker to be told that he hadn't made amends, had not even begun to atone for eight centuries of killing...

With a deep-throated, animal snarl, the Enforcer drew the stake away a short distance and held it, poised for the death blow.

Nick wanted to close his eyes, but they remained fixed on the stake as it retreated another few inches, then began its lethal   
arc toward him. He cried out, tried to rear back and met the immovable force of the other Enforcer, who held him fast. The stake flashed forward -- and was clamped by a pale hand that stopped its thrust scant inches from his chest. The Enforcer snarled as the length of wood was wrenched away, taken into other hands, hands that grasped it at either end and snapped it like a twig, then crushed it into so many splinters.

Lacroix glowered down at his son, a pitifully limp and quaking thing still held in one Enforcer's grasp, and said, "I invoke the  
Rule of Leniency."

Enraged snarls chorused Lysette's patently disappointed statement. "That is your right. You will state the conditions."

Yes, of course, Nick thought, furiously willing his body to stop trembling and failing. There were always conditions.

Something sailed over his head, slapped into the standing Enforcer's hands. In moments, a twin to the stake Lacroix had  
crushed came back to threaten him, resting once more above his heart. Now it would come: Lacroix's reassertion of his   
control, his _ownership._

"It's quite simple, really." A muffled thud as the splintered stake was hurled away. Then Lacroix's crooning tones came nearer  
as the master crouched beside him on the floor. "I require your abandonment of this foolhardy quest to be mortal. And then I will have your allegiance, _chevalier._ Your fealty. Your _obedience."_ The voice washed over him, caressed him. "Swear these to me, and I will spare you."

_No!_

He wanted to scream the word, but choked it into silence beneath the more terrifying vision of the one thing Lacroix knew  
full well he feared most. Judgment. Damnation. His immortal soul forever lost...

The master's fist closed around the poised stake and slowly, torturously, pressed it home. The needle tip rent first cloth,  
then flesh, and began to draw blood.

"Swear!"

 _No. Please, God, no. I cannot live this way anymore. I cannot **be** this anymore_. But neither could he face the God he  
entreated with the blood of innocents still staining his hands. He hadn't atoned. His penance was nowhere near complete...

"I'm waiting, Nicholas." The stake pressed harder, evoked a strangled cry of pain.

"The words, Nicholas. Let me hear the words!"

He'd sworn fealty to no one in centuries, not since the oath that had sent him, lifetimes ago, to Jerusalem. To swear it to  
Lacroix...

The wood pressed inward, twisting. The words tumbled from his mouth in a piteous, choking voice. "I... I swear..."

Instantly, the stake withdrew. Hands that had gripped him from behind sent him with a contemptuous shove to the floor,   
where he sprawled on hands and knees, still quaking, his vision obscured by red-stained tears. With a horrifying shame, he realized that the childish, wracking sobs he could hear were his own.

Voices murmured somewhere above him. Then came the triple whisper of flight; three of his erstwhile 'guests' departing. Only  
three.

In another moment, Lacroix's soft, beguiling voice had returned. A hand touched his shoulder, deceptively gentle.

"Now then, Nicholas. We have yet to resolve the little matter of _my_ retribution."

  
*+*

  
Two things stirred him to consciousness. First was the strong, iron odor of blood, and second, the familiar approaching  
rumble of the loft's elevator. A sense of returning strength told him that the sun was setting. He could also feel the solidity of  
a wall against his back, and the sharp pain of... something... cutting into the palm of his left hand.

The sound of the loft door sliding open preceded Natalie's sudden gasp. She called his name, querulous at first and then more  
urgently as her footsteps rushed across the floor, shoes grinding over broken glass. Something dropped to the floor alongside him: her medical bag, he realized when the latch clicked open. She'd said she would bring by another of her protein concoctions...

"My God, Nick, what on Earth--?" She touched him, began a thorough and expert examination of cuts, bruises, of already  
healing wounds. But her proximity bombarded him with yet another set of sensations that spurred his raging hunger: the throbbing of her heart, the nearness, the *scent* of her...

He twisted away, tried to burrow himself into the juncture of wall and kitchen cabinet. _Please, Nat, just get away from me. I_  
 _can't control it. You know I can't._

As though divining his thoughts, she retreated, shoes crunching more glass across the kitchen floor. He heard the  
refrigerator door open, then her mild oath. He knew it would be empty. The carnage on the floor around him had been  
Lacroix's parting comment on the end of Nick Knight's quest for mortality.

 _Just go, Nat,_ he begged silently, and the plea came as much from shame as it did from his desire to protect her from his  
increasing need. _Accept that this creature you've tried to help, to change, is not human, will never **be** human. It is not even a_  
 _man; only a cowardly, quailing thing that is owned -- possessed -- by another, greater evil. I was wrong to involve you, a fool ever to endanger you this way._

The enticement of Natalie's heartbeat returned to his side. Warm fingers grasped his uninjured hand, pulled it upward, pressed  
something into it. Vaguely, he identified the shape as that of a coffee mug, its contents as human blood. An acquisition from the medical bag?

"Drink," Nat's voice commanded. When he didn't -- couldn't -- comply fast enough, her hands guided the cup to his mouth, tipped it until the cool liquid flowed into him and, for the moment, eased the hunger.

The cup withdrew, and she began her clinical examination anew, tweezers plucking glass shards from his hand, salve balming the burns on his face and arms. He endured her attentions stoically and in silence. When his senses told him that another of his kind was somewhere near, he staid her hand, tried to force his eyes open far enough to see. Then the signature became a familiar one -- Janette's -- and he relaxed once again, allowing another of Natalie's alchemies to be dripped into his eyes.

"You are either very brave, or very foolhardy, Dr. Lambert." So solicitous, his Janette. Was there a hint of jealousy in that  
elegant, French inflection?

"Probably." Nat seemed not in the least surprised at Janette's abrupt appearance. In fact, her voice took on the tone  
a doctor might use to subordinates in an operating room. "Help me with him," she ordered.

Nick allowed them to lift him without protest, and then with their guidance, forced his feet to move, to navigate across the  
slippery floor to the leather couch. There, Nat unceremoniously proceeded to strip off his blood-soaked clothing and check for  
further damage. "I don't suppose," she said, still every inch the detached professional, "either of you would care to tell me who did this? Or why?"

"Ah." Janette made the single syllable speak volumes.

Through the amber haze of his clearing vision, Nick saw her move away and climb the stairs to the loft's second floor,  
disappearing into the bedroom. He collected what shreds he could of his dignity, sat up and stilled Nat's fussing hands. "I'm all  
right," he insisted, but his voice broke on the last word.

"Could've fooled me." She was angry now, shoving implements back into the leather bag with a vengeance. "Excuse me. I thought we'd begun to accomplish something here. A little _trust,_ for a start."

"Nat..."

Janette was back, a neatly folded set of clothes in hand. Accepting them from her, Nick rose and awkwardly dressed himself.  
Nat watched without offering to help. The ensuing silence was deafening.

Janette cleared her throat. "If you wish me to go, Nicola..."

"No." He squeezed her hand, pleased at the smile he saw in her eyes.

"Then I think you must answer the good doctor's question. You owe her that much, surely?"

Natalie's eyes were darting back and forth between them, unsure what to make of this. Nick nodded, stepped away into the  
ruin of his kitchen. "Lacroix." He had trouble getting the name out. His throat wanted to close over it, to strangle both creator and creation.

"But--" Natalie stammered, glancing to the burned elevator door in confusion. "But he's..."

"The oldest among us," Janette said matter-of-factly, "do not die easily. Some even think it possible they cannot die at all."  
With a telling look at Nick, she went on, "Nonetheless, it is against the Code -- a death sentence -- to destroy the one who made you. The fact that Nicola is here and still alive can mean only one thing."

Nick glared, hating her in that moment for knowing so easily what he had tried so hard to deny. Now, somehow, he would have to find the words to tell Natalie, to make her understand that his time here was over. Lacroix had won.

"He invoked the Rule of Leniency, didn't he?" Janette guessed. "And then he made you--"

"Don't." Infuriated and ashamed, Nick stalked away from both of them to the fireplace, where he leaned miserably on the  
carved facade.

"Made you what?" Natalie demanded, hurt and anger still seething. "Promise to love, honor and obey?"

Nick could hear Janette's smirk. "Something like that, yes," she said.

Natalie stormed toward him. "And just like that, you cave in? He just walks in here and... and does _this,_ and no one questions,  
no one stops him, no one even _tries_ to punish him for--"

"Nat!" She started at the sudden desperation in his voice. He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her. "Please, Nat, promise  
me you'll never try anything like that." His hands tightened on her arms. "You can't defeat Lacroix. No one can."

She met his gaze with cold determination, clearly not believing a word of it. "At least tell me _why_ he did this."

Why. In twenty lifetimes, he'd never been able to answer that. He let go of her, took a deep breath, forced the bitter  
words out. "He's... taking his revenge. Reclaiming what is 'his.'"

"You."

It hadn't been a question, but he lowered his eyes and answered it anyway. "Yes."

Nat was biting her lower lip, the way she often did when she was trying not to cry. "I guess there's really nothing else to  
say, then, is there?"

What else _could_ he say? _Even if we'd found a cure, you and I, Lacroix would never have allowed it, not for long. He would_  
 _have killed you and reclaimed me, no matter what_.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"So am I."

He reached out a tentative hand, brushed at the tear on her cheek. "Don't hate me, Nat," he whispered. "Please. I think I  
could bear anything else but that."

"You don't belong to him!" She let the tears flow freely now. "You can be your own man, do as you please!"

"No." He shook his head. "No, I have never known that privilege. Not as a mortal, not in the crusades, not in the eight  
hundred years since. I have never been my own, at least not for long. And certainly not since..." He glanced away at the wreckage of the loft. "...since this."

Even as he said it, he sensed the tingling of Lacroix's presence above him. Both he and Janette looked up at the skylight,  
saw a shadow fall across it, felt the commanding pull of their master's urging that it was time to go.

Natalie looked up as well, then abruptly wheeled, retrieved her medical bag, and headed for the elevator. She turned back from  
the open door to lock gazes with Nick. After a long moment, she started to say something, but no words formed. She   
stiffened, allowed the door to slide closed instead. Nick stood and listened to the elevator descend, taking Natalie Lambert back to the street, to the real world, to her life. It also took with it the last shred of his hopes for mortality.

After a prolonged silence, Janette said simply, "She is in love with you, you know."

So little escaped Janette's notice.

"I know," he said.

She slipped a small, delicate hand into his, grasping the gauze bandage Natalie had placed there. "We must go, Nicola."

He closed his eyes, felt the strength of their bond, and nodded.

Out in the night, above the skylight, Lacroix waited.

\-- End --

 **No Good-Byes**  
[A brief sequel to "Judgment Night"] by Jean Graham

Toronto's night wind whipped at his hair and coat, a persistent tugging that anticipated flight. The bond tugged at him  
as well, but Nicholas ignored it for the moment. At the roof's edge, he stood apart from Janette and Lacroix, staring silently  
down at the last ember of his failed quest for humanity.

On the ground below, Natalie lingered near her car, which was still parked in the alley behind his warehouse. He indulged a  
bitter smile at the possessive thought: his warehouse. His loft. Home for two short years, about to be home no longer. Perhaps in time, when they had settled in whatever corner of the world Lacroix had chosen, he would be permitted to send for his possessions. Perhaps...

Mentally, he pushed away memories of what had occurred in the loft these two nights past, of the Enforcers and the vow Lacroix had forced from him. He would not dwell on that, he told himself. But somehow, he _would_ have to live with it.

Why hadn't Natalie gone? She simply stood there, staring back at him with tears glinting in her eyes, and that puzzled him still  
more. Their parting, moments ago, had been less than amicable. She should have been angry; should have driven away in a fury by now. Should have...

_Forgive me, Nat. But it had to be this way._

_It had to._

_It isn't what we'd planned, you and I. Not what we'd dreamed_ _and hoped for. But that's all it was -- a pleasant, impossible_  
 _dream. And a dangerous one. If I'd stayed, I would have ruined_ _your life. Worse, I would eventually have taken it from you_  
 _altogether._

If he had learned nothing else in eight hundred years of existence, he knew it to be true that no mortal woman could love  
him, nor could he permit himself to love her. He'd known it since Alyssa: he'd simply never accepted the truth of it, until now.

He wondered, were he to return to this place in two score years, what course he would find Natalie's mortal life to have  
taken. He tried to picture her, older by forty years, surrounded by a fine house, a loving husband, children and grandchildren: the mortal world's own brand of immortality.

 _May you find those dreams,_ he thought _. I give you back_ _your life, Natalie Lambert. No regrets. No good-byes. Please_  
 _live it the way God intended, and forget that a creature once_ _called Nicholas de Brabant ever darkened its path._

As though hearing his reverie, Nat finally looked away, turning to open the car door and climb inside. He still stood,  
watching until the twin red pinpoints of light marking her car had blended into Bay Street's traffic stream and disappeared   
amid Toronto's teeming mortal life.

"Well now," Lacroix's soft voice purred from behind him. "If we are quite finished casting our final lovelorn glances..."

The master paused, waited. Nick felt Janette's approach as she moved to Lacroix's side. Her mental link gently reminded him  
that it was time for them to go. But it was to Lacroix that Nick turned, locking gazes with his maker and breathing two urgent  
syllables into the wind.

"Your word," he said.

The ancient vampire's eyebrows rose in silent query.

"I have given you my oath," Nicholas continued. "Now I would have yours. Promise me you'll do nothing that brings her harm."

There. Impudent or not, the words were spoken: he could not take them back.

Lacroix's pale eyes reflected moonlight and a too-familiar hint of cruel amusement. "Is that _all?"_ His deep-throated  
chuckle took obvious glee in Nicholas' anguish.

But son merely met father's glare, and without flinching, plunged on. "No," he admitted, and fought to keep his voice level,  
to stop his emotion from choking the words. "I'll do as you've asked. I'll stop looking for a cure. I'll accept what I am, and  
I'll go with you." That had poured out easily enough. That much was, after all, already a _fait accompli_. What came next was far  
more difficult to voice. But he had taken another vow, to himself and to humanity, a century ago, and he would not break it now. "I'll go with you," he repeated. "But the one thing I will not... cannot do... is kill for you. Please..." He wanted to look away,  
but didn't. "Please don't ask that of me. I can't..."

He fully expected to see anger flare in the ice-blue eyes. Instead, Lacroix drew in an infinitely patient breath and said,  
"Very well, Nicholas. You have my word, on both accounts."

In the lengthy silence that ensued, Nicholas closed his eyes and thanked a distant God for entreaties answered, however unworthy the petitioner.

"I think," Lacroix's near-whisper said into the cold breeze, "that we have dawdled in this place quite long enough. Now.  
Come."

In a blur of wind and motion, the master took wing, vanishing into a star-scattered night. Nicholas stood a moment longer,   
and Janette pressed close against him, caressing him with a kiss.

"Be what you are, _mon ami,"_ she said. "That is _our_ lot. _Our_ immortality."

Yes. Just as Natalie's life would be hers.

Ardently, Nicholas returned his lover's kiss, then followed her into the sky.

\-- End --

See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>  



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